


#NewYearNewMe

by TreacherousGnome



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, New Year's Eve, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 15:24:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5631439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreacherousGnome/pseuds/TreacherousGnome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Much to John's chagrin, he finds himself at a party on New Year's Eve. Much more to his chagrin, it's in his own dorm, meaning he's stuck there. But when he sees his roommate, he just can't seem to stay mad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	#NewYearNewMe

            With every boom from the stereo, the floor seemed to shake harder. To John Egbert, current owner (at least in part) of said floor, the vibrations seemed so heavy that he could barely cross it, and the bass that accompanied them so loud that people inches from him seemed to talk in muffled static. Both of these could also be attributed to the fact that he was, at this moment, quite drunk.

            He had very good reason to be though, since today marked the last day of the year, and John was heralding in the new one the way most college kids did: wasted and alone.

            Well okay, “alone” may have been a bit of a dramatization. Yes, he was ending the year as single as nearly every other year of his life, but he was fine with that, honestly! He was surrounded by friends (or at least some people his roommate knew), music was blasting throughout his dorm, and the flailed groping that passed as dancing spread out around him like a play. Someone he’d never seen before gleefully handed him a beer, and with little thought but a smile in thanks, he opened it and took several generous sips.

            The guy walked off before John could get a word in, busy trying to get a long-haired chubby girl from John’s Marine Biology class to make him her first mistake of the New Year. He found himself staring after them longer than he meant to, and in his stupor, he found himself surprised by the reaction. Was he possibly… _jealous_ of the hipster douchebag, and his one-day relationship, and… and his ability to be noticed in a faceless crowd?

            The couple were nothing like what John wanted to be like, no one here was, if he was being overly honest with himself, yet he found himself envying how they embraced what seemed like chaos around them, how they seemed to hear each other over the deafening music, see each other in the darkness of black lights and an almost-midnight sky.  For the first time in his life, he considered the possibility that he had drunk a little too much.

            He stumbled off and unlocked the balcony door, desperate to find the quiet that would feel less lonely than the crowd he’d come from. John and his roommate had agreed to keep it mostly off-limits for the night to ensure the inevitable make out sessions wouldn’t exceed its weight limit, and of course to at least reduce the amount of drunken stumbling over the edge that was sure to accompany it. What he found was not the calm-before-the-storm new year’s stillness he wanted, but rather a boy gazing up at the stars, beer in hand.

            It should come as no surprise that the only other person with a balcony key may just be on the balcony, but John had not gotten any more sober and was genuinely shocked to see Dave here.

            “I figured you’d be inside.”

            “Nah.” Dave shrugged, words slurred to about the same degree as his roommate’s. “The fireworks are gonna go off in a few minutes. Figured I’d get a decent view, y’know?” He glanced over at John. “You?”

            “Things were just depressing I guess. Why do people always have to have sex with strangers on New Year’s Eve, huh? Like what do they expect to come out of it?” John sighed.

            “Don’t you know, dude? Baby New Year is just a shitty euphemism for those weird troll drones that go around demanding jizz sacrifices. As soon as that clock ticks over, they’ll come out from the fireworks with their buckets. No one does it by choice man, they do it cuz that timer’s countin’ down to their death. Auld Lang Sign, more like Auld Lang Sighing cuz I absolutely do not want to bone right now.”

            “That… that made even less sense than usual.” Though he tried, John couldn’t hold back his giggles.

            “Nah, you’re just drunk is all.” Dave’s gaze returned to the sky, still lit up with nothing but campus lights. “People just wanna start over, man. They wanna be bolder, so they take chances, all ‘Maybe this idiot I sleep with be the love of my life,’ or, ‘If I can sleep with this chick, I probably am good enough to sleep with chicks at every party.’”

            “But they don’t,” he groaned, frustrated now “They never actually do any of that stuff!”

            “Yeah, usually. But some probably do. I don’t know, man, we don’t know that many people.” He had a point. Even as far as parties went, theirs was pretty low-key. “And even if they don’t, it’s like, people’s one day a year to be who they wanna be, y’know? Sure, most of them just wanna be drunk idiots but hey, they’re drunk idiots with dreams, dammit. All they gotta ask themselves who they wanna be and bam-“ he smacked his hand together “They’re it.”

            John thought about the perspective, trying to place the words into the personalities of the classmates currently shacking up in their dorm rooms. What kind of person did _he_ want to be, if what Dave said held any ground. Before he could quite figure it out, Dave’s hand shot up into the sky. “Shit, hear that?”

            Around campus, mobs could be heard shouting, chanting a familiar countdown as Dave put his jacket over his roommate’s freezing shoulder.

            “Three…

            2…

            1…”

            Noise and fireworks filled the air as the countdown ended, but Dave paid attention to none of it. All that he was focused on, all that he _could_ focus on in this moment, and not just from the buzz of the cheap beer, was John Egbert’s lips, thin and soft, pressed against his. The kiss was neither hot nor chaste, but it couldn’t be said that it lacked passion for the few seconds it lasted. The two locked eyes afterwards, all shy eyes and drunken giggling.

“Maybe you’re right,” John admitted, after kissing him once again, “about the person I want to be.”        

For the first time all night, he felt _whole_ , validated in a way he had yet to feel by one-night stands and friendships that lasted only as long as the high. Everything he wanted, and everything he wanted to be was right here on this balcony, was him and Dave.

His roommate’s subsequent “I love you,” fell upon deaf ears as the fireworks continued to explode at near-deafening volumes, but it didn’t stop them from peppering the other’s face with kisses well into the night after he couldn’t work up the nerve to repeat himself.

At one point, with sounds of celebration around them from every angle and the most beautiful boy in the world on his lips, warm under his jacket, it was all Dave could do to pause and take in the moment, to remember this, if nothing else could be remembered from the night.

“Happy New Year, John.”

John smiled and kissed him again.

“Happy New Year, Dave.”

           

**Author's Note:**

> A short little thing I wrote around this time last year~ Hope you enjoyed :D


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